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I’m curious. Is there a labor law legal basis for fining players and coaches in NFL? If you’re working on a loading dock and you drive the forklift into something expensive, you can’t get fined for damaging company property. You can get sent home unpaid, you can get fired, maybe even prosecuted, but fined? No go.

But players get fined all the time for bad hits, coaches get fined for saying hurtful things about the refs, and all of it is just hunky dory. I think some fines have even been contested, maybe even gone to court, but the whole act of fining players, staffers, and coaches is still there.

Maybe it’s because the NFL is a monopoly and the expectation is that anyone who is drawing pay to play a game should act thankful for the opportunity, maybe not enough players have worked real jobs, or know that if they did, they would never make seven figures doing it with their skillset if it weren’t for pro sports.

If Del Rio decided to make a stink about it and just say “you know what, pay me or fire me, but I never agreed to be fined for saying what’s on my mind about something that doesn’t touch football. My lawyers will be in touch.”, it couldn’t happen to a better team.

I think some fines have even been contested, maybe even gone to court, but the whole act of fining players, staffers, and coaches is still there.

You undoubtedly know much more about the NFL than I do (I think that I may have caught a few minutes of one NFL game on airport TV about 25 years ago, while waiting for a delayed flight - it's where the ball is a prolate spheroid, right? And the players are allowed to actually touch it with their hands? Correct me if I'm wrong.)

But my guess is that, after breaking one's butt for decades and slowly working one's way up the hierarchy, one is already so far into the "system" that it seems reasonable to accept when the higher-ups make you an offer and say, "Look, we'll pay you ten million dollars a year - but we also reserve the right to summarily impose $100,000 fines on you if we ever catch you eating peas with a knife, or failing to extend your pinkie when drinking tea."

One is already so far down the "rabbit hole" that it seems acceptable.

Del Rio is welcome to contest the fine, for all I care - but my attitude is: "Sleep with dogs, and wake up with fleas."

A big chunk of his annual remuneration is not for good coaching - it's for "toeing the company line."

Regards,

Unlike forklift drivers, pro athletes, coaches, and other staff sign and agree to a negotiated contract with the other party, usually the team, not the league. Both parties agree to abide by the terms of that contract, whatever they may be.

In the case of the NFL, each team has an owner and those owners are also partners in a separate entity which is the NFL. It is a partnership with 32 equal owners, which are the team owners.

The league owners then hire a commissioner to run the league, in this case Roger Goodell. He is their employee.